Thankfully this morning I woke up early enough to get one of the two showers at the campsite. I have to say we were spoiled the day before with nice toilets and showers. This one you had to fight for one of the four sinks, but regardless it felt so good to take a nice, hot shower. As I was getting prepped I was talking to a nice Canadian lady, who of course wanted to talk politics 😉 – thankfully she was willing to accept us in Canada if the election doesn’t go in our favor!

On our way out if Vik, we took a short drive through town, which was literally three roads, stopped at the IceWear factory / gift shop and then headed out on Route 1. Unfortunately on my list I had today’s activities out of order and we missed the canyon that we really wanted to see, but that would have meant driving 45 mins back and I just didn’t think that was the best idea. So our first stop of the day were two waterfalls, Svartifoss, with required a bit of a hike, but the hike was beautiful, especially since to one side was Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajokull, covering 8% of the country.

The views all around were amazing. At the bottom was Skaftafell, not as easily seen from our vantage point, but the sound was relaxing.

After realizing my mistake and debating whether to turn back to see Fjadrargljufur Canyon, we just decided to keep moving and head to the glacier lagoon.

Since we had a little extra time on our hands Nick decided to do a little off road trip and we took one of the F roads back as far as we could to get as close the the glacier. It was a little terrifying as we were surrounded by rocks, dirt and NOTHING else, I felt as if we had landed on the moon.

 We made our way to the lagoon, which was about an hours drive, it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The lagoon with all the icebergs was so tranquil. Thankfully where we first stopped off there was us and four other people, so just sitting there watching them float was peaceful.

The lagoon was quite large and there were several pull offs along it, with the last being the major tourist stop, where you could also take a boat ride out into the lagoon and get closer to the glacier. From there we made our way across the road to Diamond Beach, which is appropriately named as the icebergs that float from the lagoon out to sea, are pushed up onto this black sandy beach. Nick and I commented how much more beautiful the black sand was at this beach than the one we saw the prior day. As we kept walking, the icebergs became more beautiful, I think for two reasons, the sun was hitting them just right and less people had touched / played with these. It was sad to see people ruining it by writing their names with the black sand on the icebergs.

While standing there we watched a seal try to swim his way back into the lagoon, we had heard that you will often times find seals playing within the lagoon or laying up on the icebergs, it was fun to watch him, but unfortunately I think he was swept out to sea as the tide was going out, but he was sure trying as hard as he could.

Our original plan was to camp at the lagoon in their parking lot as there were no campsites that were included in our camping card near by, however since we were so far along in our trip for missing our first activity of the day we decided to keep driving until we got tired and pull off alongside the road and sleep, we do have a sleep n drive after all 😉

Diamond Beach

 We found a nice campground in Hofn, but it was quite packed and there was only one shower, which was an additional charge to what you had to pay to stay there. We decided to forego and keep driving. At this point we were driving right along the ocean and had found a nice quiet place to pull off for the night, but before we could start to set up our camp a car pulled in and joined us – out of all the spots to stop, they chose ours. I didn’t say anything but Nick promptly got back in the car and we drive some more. We happened upon a sign indicating camping, so we turned off, drove up the mountain to find a quaint little inn that also allowed camping in their yard. They had showers, the lady standing by the road took our 2,000 krona and we set up for the night. Needless to say after all the driving we had done today I didn’t last long….